Tax Bill Passes House, Housing Trust Fund Still Alive.

H.R. 4213 was passed today, HT fund still included.

Email from Sheila Crowley, NLIHC explains:

"National Housing Trust Fund. The bill would provide a one-time capitalization of the National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF), which will provide communities with funds to build, preserve, and rehabilitate rental homes that are affordable for very low income households. These homes will help address the serious shortage of affordable housing for lowest income families, including people who are unemployed or employed in the low wage work force, veterans, and elderly and disabled people on fixed incomes. It is estimated that an infusion of $1 billion in capital funds into the NHTF and $65 million for project-based vouchers to couple with NHTF capital grants will support the immediate production of 10,000 rental homes, creating 15,000 new construction jobs and 4,000 new jobs in ongoing operations. This provision is estimated to cost $1.065 billion over 10 years."

The margin of victory in the House was quite narrow (215-204). The difficulty in passing the bill had little or nothing to do with the National Housing Trust Fund provisions.  H.R. 4213 was a very large bill ($200 billion) that was winnowed down ($115 billion) over the last week because of complaints that some provisions did not have offsets and thus will add to the federal deficit.  Items that were cut include Medicaid payments to the states and extension of health insurance benefits for unemployed people.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.